


The White Lotuses

by SilentAuror



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Domestic romance, John figures it out, M/M, POV: John Watson, Porny, Romance, hints of Hinduism, lots of being at home together, lots of eating, post-series 3, slow-build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 06:06:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3717955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentAuror/pseuds/SilentAuror
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day John realises that he just isn't where he belongs, which is back at Baker Street with Sherlock. So he goes back and Sherlock, in his own way, courts him. Romance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The White Lotuses

**The White Lotuses**

 

He knew it at Christmas. He knew it before the words were even out of his mouth, that it was a mistake. He’d hesitated at _Seriously? Months of silence and we’re going to do this now?!_ , but then he’d gone on and made himself, hadn’t he? He’d walked himself through the motions, but registered all the while that Mary didn’t seem to feel that she’d done anything wrong whatsoever. She hadn’t apologised. She’d only been angry that he hadn’t talked to her for so long, drifting through those six months in an oppressive silence that had suffocated him even with her on the other side of the city. And she hadn’t even _jokingly_ agreed to let him in on naming the baby. 

It was definitely a mistake. It’s only been a week and John already knows he isn’t going to last, and he suspects that Mary knows it, too. He cannot touch her. Cannot make himself want to. Nothing beyond a show in public, her hand in his. She hugs him sometimes and he lets her. He’s even tried to kiss the top of her head but couldn’t bring it off, his lips echoing shallowly in the empty air above her hair. He certainly can’t put his mouth on hers, look her in the eye, tell her that he loves her. And he sure as hell can’t make himself make love to her. She asked, only the other night, and he had to fob her off with a headache, which used to be her line when she didn’t feel like it. She’s been trying to pretend like everything is back to normal, whatever that is. He knows it can’t work, not now that he knows that ‘normal’ is an empty shell, a meaningless façade. He doesn’t know the truth lurking behind it and doesn’t want to. What little he knows is bad enough. 

He spent the summer and autumn at Baker Street, looking after Sherlock and trying to keep him from over-exerting himself – a never-ending and thankless task, but there’d been no question about it. He’d owed Sherlock that much, given that it was his own wife that shot him, even if she’s a complete stranger to him now. And he doesn’t want to know her any better than he does. There’s more to it than this – he knows in his heart of hearts that it’s not just about what’s wrong with Mary. It’s also that she was the wrong person all along. This is the very thought he has been attempting to clamp down on and suppress ever since Sherlock walked into the restaurant that night. He’s done all right with that. It was difficult, during those months back at Baker Street, but he’d kept his mind on the promise he’d made, on the duty that lies ahead of him. Yet somehow, suddenly, on his ninth day back in the flat, John realises he’s come to the end point. Nothing in particular sets it off. He just knows that he has to speak. 

“Are you really pregnant?” he asks suddenly, breaking the silence in the sitting room. This is the one question he needs a clear answer to, because it’s the only thing holding him there now. Mary broke the promise they made to one another first, so it doesn’t matter much if John doesn’t hold up his end, either. But they’re expecting a child. Or so she’s said all along. But if she isn’t – John can’t even say why he is asking now. Sherlock used to tell him that he hadn’t developed his deductive abilities enough to rely on them, but that his instincts were good and to trust them. John had already known that much from Afghanistan. Perhaps this question is coming from some seed of doubt in his gut, then? He looks over at Mary, waiting for an answer, not softening the question or explaining it. 

Mary looks back at him, startled, her hand going automatically to her belly. “What kind of question is that?” she asks, sounding indignant. “Of _course_ I – ”

“Don’t lie to me,” John cuts in, his eyes meeting hers plainly across the small space. “Just this once. Don’t lie to me.” 

Her lips press together, eyebrows lifting at a dangerous angle. “That’s rich, coming from the man who deliberately kept himself from knowing my past,” she says, and just like that the veil has been torn away. This is real now. This might be the first honest conversation they’ve ever had. 

John feels infinitely relieved, somehow. This is better, he tells himself. Unpleasant as it is, it’s better to have the real thing. “I know,” he says shortly. “I thought I wanted that. I thought I preferred that. I’m just realising that I was wrong. I want to know the truth, about this at least. So tell me: are you really pregnant?” 

Mary has the grace to drop her gaze. John watches to see if she’ll colour at this. He’s never seen her blush before, and he doesn’t now; her face is pale and unruffled. “No,” she says. It’s a bit low, not defensive for once. 

John hears himself make an incredulous sound, and points at her belly. “What’s that, then? A fake? Seriously?” When she doesn’t answer, he presses the point. “The other night when you wanted us to… how did you think I wasn’t going to notice? Were you going to – what, keep your clothes on or something?” 

Mary’s mouth works. “It didn’t matter in the end anyway, did it?” she says, defiant. “I knew you hadn’t really forgiven me. What man avoids his wife for six months and then doesn’t want it once he finally comes home? Unless you were getting it somewhere else, of course.” 

She’s insinuated this before and it sends him into a silent, internal fury every time. It isn’t that he doesn’t know what he wants, or has wanted, where Sherlock is concerned. But that’s private, that stuff. That’s his own issue to deal with. Or not deal with. Either way: it’s his call, and it doesn’t involve her. And now maybe it will finally be time to look that in the eye and – go forth to meet it, at last. The thought stirs something in John’s belly, almost something like realising that it’s the first day of summer holidays. (But not yet: he has to finish this first.) “I have never been unfaithful to you,” he says, striving to keep his voice steady, though his fingers are clenching around the arms of his chair. “Considering that you shot my best friend in the heart, I don’t think you’re in much of a position to make accusations against me for pretty much anything.” 

He says it nicely enough, but Mary’s face darkens – with anger, not humiliation or shame. “So it’s come to this, then, has it?” she asks, and her voice is calm, too, but there’s steel beneath it. “You can’t let it go. Can you.” 

John pauses for a moment, then says, “No. I don’t think I can.” A few seconds pass, their eyes on each other’s, then he adds, just to be decent about it, “I’m sorry.” He isn’t sorry. Every bloody shred of this mess is her fault and she’d better know it. Still. It seems as good a way as any to soften the blow. “Mary, I’m – I can’t stay. I’m moving out again.” 

Mary’s features twist in contempt. “Lasted all of nine days,” she comments, her tone turning nasty. “I was surprised you came back in the first place. I should have known it was too much to expect you to give a person a fresh start.”

John shakes his head. “Did you even want one?” he asks. It’s mostly rhetorical. 

“Yes, I did!” Mary says loudly. “I’m here, aren’t I? Married and living in the suburbs and ex – ” She stops herself from saying it just in time, and John snorts. 

“Expecting?” he says. “Christ, you can’t even sort the lies from the truth, yourself! This entire thing is a farce and we both know it. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. I should have seen that sooner, that’s all.” 

Mary twists at the hem of her shirt, her face red from her mistake. _This_ she feels shame about, John notices. Nothing else that she’s done. But this, a small slip-up in her lies, a chip in the smooth façade: that’s embarrassing for her. Not the rest of it. This is wounded professional pride, that’s all. “I married you in good faith, you know,” she tells him, looking down. “I meant it when I said I loved you. But you don’t love me any more. Do you.” 

John sighs and doesn’t answer this. She already knows what he would say. “Are you even sorry?” he asks instead. “Because you’ve never apologised. Neither to Sherlock nor to me. You shot him. He could have turned you in then, but he didn’t. Instead he encouraged me to go back to you – and kept it up all through the autumn, I might add – but he never turned you in when he could have. And then he eliminated the man who would have exposed you to the world and they would have sent him back into the field. You know that. And yet you never even thanked him. Never said you were sorry for having shot him. _Are_ you sorry? At all?” His voice has got higher and more incredulous as he’s gone on, but he stops now to let her answer, watching her face. 

Mary lifts her eyes and her chin juts out. “No,” she says coolly. “I had my reasons.”

“Yeah, well, they were shit reasons,” John says flatly. “You just wanted to be able to keep lying to me. Have you ever been sorry for all the lies? Only you’ve never apologised for that, either.” 

Mary holds his gaze steadily. “You never would have looked at me twice if you’d known who I really was,” she says. 

“Why, because I have a conscience?” John returns. She doesn’t blink. “Christ, Mary – have you ever felt remorse about anything you’ve done? Any of it at all? Or are you genuinely a psychopath?” 

Her eyes glint but her face remains unmoved and she doesn’t respond to this. “When are you going?” 

John glances at his watch. “Maybe tonight,” he says. “Might as well.” 

Mary reaches around behind her back and unclips the false belly and puts it on the sofa cushions beside her. Then she gets to her feet. “You’re going back to Baker Street,” she states. 

John nods. “Assuming it’s all right with Sherlock, yeah.” 

Mary rolls her eyes and goes into the kitchen without saying a word, the unspoken implication clear enough. And with that, it seems that the conversation is over. 

John is a bit relieved, though it feels rather anticlimactic to have his brief, failed marriage end without so much as a fizzle. He gets up and goes into the bedroom, retrieves his suitcase from the closet and starts packing his clothes into it. He thinks of texting Sherlock but decides to just show up instead. He’s quite sure that Sherlock won’t mind. In fact, he’s rather counting on it. 

*** 

He doesn’t ring the bell, though he sort of wonders if he should. After all, he’s still got his key and Sherlock knows it. He’d thought about offering to return it after Christmas, once Sherlock had been released from the Serbia mission, but somehow it had never come up. He hadn’t wanted to draw attention to it, the fact that he’d moved out again. Rub in it, as it were. When they’d left for Sherlock’s parents’ on Christmas Day, he’d been planning it. Taking Mary back. He’d taken a small bag of his things and he’d seen the way Sherlock’s gaze went to it and stayed on it, unmoving. He hadn’t said anything, just swallowed, and there’d been a horribly strained silence in the entrance way for a moment, and then mercifully Mycroft had phoned Sherlock to say that the car was outside. Sherlock never said a word about it, but it was clear that he knew that John was planning to go. He’d been urging John to do it off and on, saying things about his safety and all that, but John had always suspected it was a bit half-hearted. 

He’d hoped it was, a bit. More than a bit. (Definitely, John confirms inwardly.) He puts his key in the lock and turns it, thinking of Sherlock looking at his bag, the look on his face, and feels a tightness in his throat. He hasn’t been back here since then, though he’s seen Sherlock once or twice since the aborted mission. But only twice in nine days. It’s not enough. It’s never enough, when it comes to Sherlock. He really is like a drug and John’s said more than once that he’s good and addicted. Sherlock’s never commented on that, either. Never called him on it, asked why then, if John is so addicted, he did leave and go back to Mary again. He’s more tactful than people realise, John thinks, then belatedly realises that he only just saw it, himself. He shoulders his bag – the same bag that he left with – and carries his suitcase in his other hand and climbs the stairs, half feeling like he’s tiptoeing, though Sherlock will have heard the door. If he’s home, that is. 

He is. John is nearly at the top of the stairs when Sherlock comes to the doorway. It’s close to ten but of course he’s still up, barefoot in his pyjama pants and open dressing gown, no t-shirt underneath. He looks and sounds astonished. “John!” His eyes fall on the suitcase, take in the bag, and for a moment he just blinks. 

“Er, hi,” John says, feeling slightly awkward. He climbs the last three steps and puts down the suitcase and straightens up to look at Sherlock. Sherlock looks as though he’s thinking half a dozen things, but is waiting for him to say something more first. And John does rather have to explain himself, turning up at ten in the evening with his things, only nine days after having gone back to his wife. “I’ve, er, changed my mind,” he says, the words sounding rather inadequate. 

Sherlock blinks three more times, studying his face. “About?” he asks, a bit too carefully. 

John tries for a shrug. “Mary,” he says. “The whole – um – going back thing. Yeah. Was a mistake. Wrong decision. I just – I couldn’t, any more. I know it was only a week or so, but – yeah.” 

Sherlock doesn’t move. “What about your child?”

“There is no child.” John is blunt. “She fooled us both. It was a fake the entire time.” 

Sherlock’s brows come together. “A fake – John – ”

“It’s all right,” John interrupts. “I’m a bit relieved, if you want to know. If the marriage was working, it might be different, but it isn’t, so – this is better. Anyway, it wasn’t just that. The entire thing was unsalvageable.” 

Sherlock looks down at his suitcase, obviously still thinking a lot of things he isn’t saying. “Are you staying?” he asks, as though speaking to the suitcase. 

“Yeah,” John says again. “If that’s all right, I mean. If you don’t mind.” That’s stupid; he knows Sherlock wouldn’t mind, but it just seems like the thing to say. 

Sherlock glances at him, not quite meeting his eyes. “Of course,” he says. He reaches down and picks John’s suitcase up and takes it into the sitting room. “Come in,” he says. He leaves the suitcase just inside the door. “You can take it up later.” He rakes his fingers through his hair, puts his hands on his waist, then says, sort of spontaneously, “Tea?” 

It occurs to John that Sherlock feels even more wrong-footed than he does, and suspects there are still a lot of questions that haven’t been asked yet. “Sure,” he says, meaning the tea. Maybe Sherlock will get to those yet. He looks around the sitting room. It’s a bit cluttered, but not a lot more so than usual. Just enough that he can tell that he hasn’t been here for a bit too long. The thought makes him smile to himself. The room is chilly, though. “Shall I light the fire?” he asks. 

Sherlock looks over at him from the kitchen where he’s just plugging in the kettle. “Sure,” he says. “Is it cold?” 

He never seems to feel it the way John does, John thinks, looking at Sherlock’s long, pale, bare feet. “Just a bit,” he says. 

“You should have told me you were coming,” Sherlock says, coming back into the room with a tea tray laid, which is certainly fancier than he normally gets about tea. “I’d have lit it. And cleaned up a bit.”

“Don’t say that,” John says, going to the grate and busying himself making a little pile of kindling. “It’s just me. I know you, what you’re like. It’s all fine.” 

Sherlock stays where he is for a moment, watching him, then comes over and gets two large pieces of pine out of the basket next to the fireplace, leaning them against the grate for him. “I’ll make sure it’s warmer from now on,” he says, then moves away. 

John smiles to himself, touched by this. He arranges the two logs over the kindling and lights it from the box of matches they always kept on the mantle. It’s such a small grate that there’s no room for more than that, but it’s fine. Maybe one day when he’s retired, he’ll move out to a cottage in the country, somewhere with a proper, big fireplace. Would Sherlock want to come? Could he survive in the country? Bit premature, he reminds himself, getting up and going to his chair. That’s better. There’s never quite been any chair as comfortable as this one. 

Sherlock comes back in with the teapot and sets it down on the tray to steep, then sits down in his own chair across from him. He’s tied his dressing gown shut but his feet are still bare. He crosses one knee over the other and smiles at John, a real smile. “Your chair was lonely,” he says. “But I didn’t move it this time.” 

John is amused by this. “That your way of saying you’ve missed having me around?” he asks, keeping it light. 

“Could be,” Sherlock acknowledges, the corner of his mouth tugging despite himself. 

“Thought maybe you’d like being on your own again,” John says, sort of teasing but probing a bit, too. “No pesky flatmate to keep you from straining your heart injury or nag you to eat regular meals.”

“Terribly liberating,” Sherlock agrees, the quirk still there. “But you’ll notice I’m still here. Heart’s still going. It’s completely fine now, if you want to know. I know it’s only been nine days since you left, but I know you’ll ask.” He reaches for the tea and pours, and if he’s using this to hide his eyes, he masks it well. “The truth is, it’s been a bit too quiet around here.” He puts the teapot down and adds milk to one cup, then passes it over.

Their eyes meet, and John feels that Sherlock is preventing himself from asking something in particular again. He suspects he knows what it is, but it’s a question of how to word it. Maybe Sherlock doesn’t know how to ask, either. Well: since he’s the one who came back, maybe it’s on him to bring it up. He takes a sip of his tea. “That’s nice,” he says, stalling. Sherlock always makes good tea, preferring to make his own blends from loose leaves. Tonight it’s Earl Grey with a scoop of lapsang souchong and something else, possibly. There’s always something not fully knowable about Sherlock’s tea mixes. Rather a lot like Sherlock himself. He clears his throat and opens his mouth, then finds he just doesn’t know how to say it. Is it a request? Is he just informing Sherlock? He doesn’t know how to put it, exactly. 

Sherlock is watching him, his eyes probably taking in exactly what he’s thinking. He doesn’t acknowledge the tea comment. After a bit, he does it, asks the question that’s hovering over them. “How long are you going to stay this time?” he asks quietly. 

The fire has caught, crackling and popping, and John is relieved for its background noise to break any silences. The _this time_ hurts, but he’s the one who put those words there between them in the first place. “I’d like to stay for a long time,” he says, his eyes on Sherlock’s face. They’re both sober and slightly tense. “That is, if you’ll have me… I mean, I’d like to stay for… well, for good.” He raises his eyes to Sherlock’s. “That all right?” 

Sherlock blinks several times, processing this and turning the words over in his mind. Then his chin ducks once. “Yes,” he says, looking at his tea. “Of course.” He hesitates, then evidently changes his mind about saying anything else in addition. 

John waits, but it seems that Sherlock isn’t going to say whatever else it is. “You’re sure?” he presses, wanting the confirmation. 

“Of course,” Sherlock repeats. He clears his own throat and picks an invisible piece of lint off his pyjama pants. “I’ve always thought of this flat as your home, not just mine. And I’m always glad to have you here.” 

His voice is quiet enough that the sound of the fire almost drowns it out. John feels warmed by it, though. The words, the fire, the tea, just – being here with Sherlock again. All of it. “It’s good to be home,” he acknowledges. He hesitates, then adds, “Really good. I missed you, too.” 

Sherlock turns his face toward the fire and smiles, not trying to hide it, but keeping some part of it to himself at the same time, and John feels warmed by this, too. 

*** 

When John wakes, there is no pause to remember where he is. It feels as though he never left, in fact. As though the nine days back with Mary are already fading like a bad dream. At this time yesterday, he woke with his back to her, half over the edge of the bed, the blankets twisted around his legs as though he’d been thrashing in his sleep. Now his legs are easy and relaxed and he yawns and thinks that he slept long and well. He hadn’t even realised what a strain it was, being back and knowing that he already missed Sherlock before they even left on Christmas Day, facing the future of life with Mary with a feeling not unlike dread. A certain inevitability, of unavoidable duty and long-suffering endurance. He tried to love her. Tried to forgive her. But it’s damned hard to forgive someone who doesn’t think she needs forgiveness. 

Never mind. He’s home again. John sits up, puts his feet in his slippers, which are still there where he left them, and goes to take his dressing gown off its hook on the back of the door and go downstairs. He’s just sitting down with a plate of toast and a pot of tea when Sherlock’s bedroom door opens. He comes into the kitchen wearing what he had on last night – his old blue dressing gown and pyjama pants. He looks alert, though. He’s not much of a morning person most of the time, so John thinks he must have already been awake for some time. “Good morning,” he says. 

Sherlock smiles a bit but it’s rather perfunctory, as though he’s thinking of something else. He pulls out the chair opposite and looks at the teapot. “Is there enough tea for me?” he asks. 

“Of course,” John says. “Let me get you a cup.” The cupboard with the cups is just behind him, so it only makes sense. He gets up and selects one that he knows Sherlock would choose and puts it on the table between them for Sherlock to help himself. “Toast?” he asks. 

Sherlock shakes his head. “I’m fine,” he says, still sounding distracted. “I can eat later. Are you going to work?” 

“Thought I might,” John says affably. It’s Friday today and the weekend is just around the corner. Now that Mary is on maternity leave (ridiculous as that is, he reminds himself), at least he doesn’t have to endure her wounded/accusing presence there any more. “I’m off at five.”

“All right,” Sherlock says. He takes a breath, stops, then appears to change his mind again. “John, I – sorry to ask, but I’m still not entirely clear on this. I should have requested more detail last night, but somehow – when you say that you intend to stay ‘for good’, what do you mean, exactly?” 

Ah. Yes. John had wondered if that might come up. “Er, well, I mean – just that,” he says, squirming internally. “I mean that I’m not planning on going anywhere. Living anywhere else. Assuming that’s all right with you.”

“It is – of course it is, but – ” Sherlock sounds both impatient as well as a bit flustered. “I don’t quite understand the implications of that. What about when you meet someone and want to marry again? Do you intend your next wife to live here, too? Or would you move out at that point?” 

John feels taken aback. He’d thought his meaning was a little clearer than that, even if he hadn’t wanted to come out and say it – not wanting to assume anything. He sees now that the fine lines around Sherlock’s eyes are a bit deeper than usual and suddenly wonders if he slept. (He didn’t lie awake all night wondering about this, did he?) John feels a pang. “No!” he says. “I should have said it better, I’m sorry. What I mean is – I’m not intending to start seeing anyone else. I’m done with all that. I would never bring a wife or girlfriend to live here, in our home! But I’m not looking for one of those in the first place.” He searches Sherlock’s face for a moment, forgetting about his toast for the time being. Sherlock still looks uncertain, as though he doesn’t understand yet. John licks his lips. “Living with Mary again, both just recently and even before the wedding, if I’m being honest – it made me realise that nothing quite measures up to this. What we have. Nothing will ever be as good. This is the life I particularly love and I intend to keep it this time.” He takes a breath and adds, “So I’m going to stay. I mean it. Besides – I felt bad, leaving at Christmas the way I did, without saying anything. Part of me never wanted to go, you know. I’m sure about this. This is where I want to be. With you.” 

Sherlock holds his gaze for a long time, his face very still and rather intense. Finally he blinks and nods. “All right,” he says. “Then it’s settled: you’re staying. For good.”

“Yeah.” John remembers his toast at last and picks up a slice, feeling relieved that this has all been hashed out and said. He wonders if he answered all of Sherlock’s questions regarding _implications_ , but that, he feels, is such a delicate, tenuous topic that he doesn’t want to have it talked about before it’s time. Some things need to happen in their own time and it’s too soon for that particular conversation. He’s not trying to avoid it; he just doesn’t want to blunder. Sherlock busies himself with the papers and John finishes his toast and tea, then gets up. “I’d best be off,” he says. “See you later.”

Sherlock looks up and smiles slightly. “I’ll be here,” he says. 

John smiles back and thinks of this, of coming home to Sherlock every day from here on in. Yes. This is definitely what he wanted. 

*** 

When he gets back, he can smell something delicious from the foot of the stairs already, but it isn’t coming from Mrs Hudson’s flat. Sherlock must be cooking, then. John’s stomach rumbles at the very thought. Back in the old days, he’d always done the lion’s share of the cooking, but when Sherlock had cooked, it was always something very good. John excels at everyday-ish food – nothing fancy, but always good, and there’s always lots of it. Sherlock always tended to be more all or nothing, as usual – either he wouldn’t cook at all, or he’d suggest they go out and pay for them both, or, about twice or three times per month, he would cook something spectacular. John goes into the flat with a sense of pleasant anticipation. 

“Hello!” he says, and Sherlock straightens up and closes the oven door. 

“Hello,” he says in return. “You’re exactly on time. Excellent.” 

He sounds satisfied and John looks around the kitchen. The table is already laid, including wineglasses and candles and a basket of something. He goes closer to see. “Pita,” he says. “Did you bake that yourself?” 

“No, but it was baked today by someone else,” Sherlock tells him, not quite smirking. “Bakery in Fitzrovia.”

“Are we having Greek, then?” John asks, feeling another tendril of hunger curl through his stomach. Lunch feels like a long time ago. 

“We are,” Sherlock confirms. He glances over. “There’s wine in the fridge if you want to open it,” he invites. “We’ve never tried it, or not together, at least. It sounds promising, going by the blurb.” 

The blurb. This is an old joke between them. John would read out the write-ups from the wine list and they would snort about whether or not it was possible to distinguish a ‘cherry nose’ or ‘subtle flavours of chalk’ from a particularly alkaline soil. John grins and goes to the fridge to retrieve said wine. “Why, what does it say?” 

“I think it’s there on the label.” Sherlock digs two spoons into a bowl and tosses its contents briskly. Salad, John thinks, catching a whiff of feta and olive oil. “We have a moment. I’ll take the chicken out shortly.” 

John finds the wine on the third shelf (of course; Sherlock ridicules the blurbs but he’ll still keep the corks wet) and pulls it out. “Let’s see,” he says. “Oh, this _does_ sound promising.” 

Sherlock comes over to stand behind him, leaning in over his right shoulder, his hand on John’s left. “Read it,” he says. 

“The 2007 Spyros Hatziyiannis, from Santorini,” he reads from the back of the label. “‘Santorini’s volcanic soils and windswept vineyards combine to create thrilling white wines like this one. It’s marked by the scent of seashells and lemon zest, and despite its light body has a surprisingly silky texture.’ Ooh. ‘Silky’. Very nice,” John comments, snickering. 

Sherlock leans in even closer, pointing. “Don’t forget the volcanic soils and windswept vineyards,” he says. “Very dramatic, I thought.” 

“How does one taste the scent of seashells?” John asks, though he’s far more preoccupied with Sherlock’s proximity, every sense on alert with awareness of it. 

Sherlock releases his shoulder and moves back to the counter to his salad. “I’m not entirely certain. Apparently we’ll be thrilled, though.” 

“No doubt.” John takes the bottle and fills both their glasses. “Anything else I can to do help?” 

“Not a thing.” Sherlock brings the salad over to the table, then frowns. “I forgot serviettes. You can do that while I get everything out of the oven.” 

“Sure.” John busies himself with this small task, then sits down as Sherlock brings over a tray of chicken souvlaki and lemon roasted potatoes, one of his very favourite meals. His mouth waters, looking at it. 

Sherlock goes to the fridge and brings back a dish of tzatziki and sets it beside the basket of pita. “There’s another bottle of wine if we want more, and there’s also dessert, just to warn you in advance.”

John shakes his head. “Wow,” he says, and means it. “I can’t believe you went to all this.”

Sherlock directs his smile to his plate. “Why not?” he asks, raising his gaze to John’s. He lifts his glass. “To you being home.” 

John’s heart begins to beat quickly. He clinks his own glass to Sherlock’s and says, “Indeed.” And thinks, _I’ll never leave it again._

Dinner is everything he hoped, both in terms of the food and the company. The chicken pieces are succulent and tender, the potatoes roasted to a crisp crunch, tangy with lemon, the tzatziki cool and fresh on the softness of the pita. Dessert proves to be yiaourtopita, a yogurt-based cake with lemon curd, and the wine does actually have a hint of seashells. 

“Though we’re probably just imagining it,” Sherlock says, refilling his glass from the second bottle. “It’s likely nothing more than a clever marketing ploy.” 

“Worked on you,” John points out. 

“True.” Sherlock refills his own glass and leans back in his chair. “I like to think I was tasting igneous sediment, personally.”

“I can’t imagine that tastes anything like seashells.” John drinks a little more of it, aware that he’s probably had enough. (Who cares, though. Tomorrow is Saturday.) “It _is_ silky, I’ll give it that.” 

“It is,” Sherlock agrees. He’s turned sideways to have crossed one knee over the other. “So tell me: why _did_ you go back, if you didn’t want to leave? Just a sense of duty? I rather thought it was more than that.”

“Well, I thought there was a child,” John says. The wine makes this easier to talk about, somehow. He looks at a flickering tea light burning low in its round glass holder. “I don’t like to think of myself as someone who would abandon a kid.” 

“No, of course not,” Sherlock says hastily. “I didn’t mean that. I meant… well, Mary. I thought there was more than duty there.” When John doesn’t answer immediately, he adds, “You had only just married her when everything happened. You loved her. It’s perfectly reasonable.” 

“Did I, though, by Christmas?” John asks aloud, slowly. “I don’t know if I did. I think I may have stopped the instant I heard her voice over the phone. When you set me up in the empty house, there. You told me you were going to phone the person who had shot you and that I would have my answers and that it wasn’t going to be easy to hear. I know you knew I would need proof on finding out, that just telling me wouldn’t have been enough. I was never expecting to hear Mary’s voice, though. I think that was the moment.” 

Sherlock is watching him, his lips slightly parted. “Full stop, or gradual decay?” he asks. “I’m not trying to aggravate the wound; I’m just curious. I couldn’t ask before. I couldn’t even ask if you were still – committed to the marriage. I didn’t know, not until you left.”

John sighs and takes another long drink of wine. “Full stop with a bit of bitter bleeding out?” he tries. “That’s what it felt closest to. I don’t know how committed I was to the marriage. I guess I felt like I really had to do my bit to at least try, but it’s not as if I felt like I owed Mary anything. She tried to kill you.” He lifts his eyes to Sherlock’s and Sherlock doesn’t deny it this time, doesn’t give him any lines about Mary having ‘saved his life’ or any such rot. “It was hard to make myself go,” he says. “I mean, it took me six months. Were you thinking that I was particularly keen to go?” 

“No,” Sherlock says, but he doesn’t sound entirely convinced. “But you did go. And the… secrecy of your departure suggests a certain amount of reluctance, or else just an unwillingness for me to know, for whatever reason.” 

“I don’t know why I didn’t tell you,” John admits, though he knows part of the reason, at least. He’d felt guilty. To both of them? To himself over knowing that he was leaving the person he really wanted to be with? And to Sherlock, too. Definitely that part. It’s too soon to say this, though. “I’m sorry, for what it’s worth,” he says. “Honestly, I never really wanted to go.” 

Sherlock shakes his head slightly, as if to tell him there is no need for the apology. “You’re here now,” he says. He looks at John again, his eyes keenly blue in the warm light of the kitchen, the candles. “Was any of it – good? With Mary?” 

“You mean, after I went back?” John asks. Sherlock nods. “No,” he says bluntly. “I hated being there.”

“But before,” Sherlock presses. “It was good then. You were happy.” 

John has to struggle for the correct response here. “At times, yes,” he says honestly. “But it was never the same, you know. I did feel torn. I know I didn’t show it. I was trying not to. I meant it when I said that this life is what I really love, though. This is what I wanted, even before all that. Even when I was at the happiest point of my relationship with Mary, I always missed this. And – you.” 

Sherlock glances up from beneath his lashes and a slow smile creeps across his face. “Good,” he says, and drops the subject at last. He pours the last of the second bottle into their glasses. “There’s more cake.” 

“I’m fit to burst as it is,” John says ruefully. “It was delicious, though. The entire thing. The perfect welcome home dinner.” 

“I thought it might be more special than going out and having to put up with incompetent waitstaff and noisy fellow patrons,” Sherlock says, sidestepping the compliment. 

“It was,” John tells him. “Thank you.” 

Colour comes into Sherlock’s cheeks, staining his cheekbones and John is charmed. He’s rarely seen Sherlock blush and wasn’t aware that there was anything on the planet that had the ability to make Sherlock react that way, as he doesn’t seem to even possess a sense of shame per se. “You’re welcome,” he says, twisting his wineglass around by its base. He gets up and swiftly takes both their dessert plates to the sink. “Do you want some coffee or tea?” he asks over the running water as he rinses them. 

“No, I think I’m good,” John says. He watches the long line of Sherlock’s back and wonders how long it might take to go a little further in these forays into the why he came back conversations. Not yet, he tells himself. Not until it feels exactly right. When we both know it is definitely, inevitably going to happen, and it’s not there yet. “Do you want to watch a film or something?” he asks instead. 

“Sure,” Sherlock says. “You can choose. I know you like furthering my education regarding popular culture.” 

John laughs. “That’s one way of putting it,” he says, and goes to get his laptop to have a look. 

Sherlock comes and sits across from him in his chair and they watch _The Avengers_ , which Sherlock mildly comments is puerile and badly written, and although he predicts every single plot point before it occurs, appears to enjoy it thoroughly. This is their typical pattern and John loves watching him get absorbed in the story regardless of his criticism. It’s perfect, he thinks, a burst of fresh happiness blooming in his gut. It’s absolutely fantastic. 

And when he gets up to go up to bed after, Sherlock also gets up, going into his room as John brushes his teeth and such in the bathroom. The door to Sherlock’s bedroom is open, and John goes to lean against the doorframe. “Good night,” he says. “Thanks again for dinner. It was lovely.” 

Sherlock is standing in the middle of his room, his shirt partly unbuttoned. He stops, his hands still on the buttons. “You’re welcome,” he says. “Good night.” 

John entertains a fleeting notion of stepping into the room and going over to help Sherlock out of his shirt, but doesn’t do it – obviously not, he reminds himself a bit sternly. He goes upstairs instead, feeling more content than he has in ages. 

*** 

And just like that, he is back home again. The transition is seamless, as though he never left – with the important distinction that this time they both know that he is going to stay. The underlying anxiety is gone. Both of them wondering when he was going to leave again, wondering what the state of things between him and Mary are, all of that. And between each other too, possibly. John still has no clear idea whether or not Sherlock wants anything more from him, but he suspects that he does. And since he knows quite well that he himself does, this is very good. There is no proof, but Sherlock has begun to touch him more frequently than he ever did before. Always small things – a fleeting pat as they pass one another, a lingering hand on his back or waist, or just Sherlock standing closer than he would have, and he was always no respecter of personal space, at least not between the two of them. 

They’re at Tesco's now, shopping for the week. It’s a Friday morning and John’s taken the day off. John made a list but Sherlock deviates from it regularly. “Let’s not get rocket,” he’d decided. “You don’t even like it. The spinach is on sale, and the Boston lettuce. Let’s get those instead. I’ll make a salad for lunch. We should get some chicken breast, and satsumas if they’ve got any.”

“All right,” John had agreed. They never used to shop together in the old days, though they’d started once Sherlock was well enough to go out after the shooting. Otherwise Mrs Hudson always used to do it, at least the big shops, supplemented by their own, individual trips to the stores to get the extra things they each wanted. Now they always go together. John stops by the pears. “You don’t particularly like pears, do you?” he asks, trying to remember. 

Sherlock makes a neutral sound. “I’m only ever in the mood for them in autumn.” He leans over John’s shoulder to pick up a firm red Anjou and studies it, almost leaning against John. “I like the colour.” 

John is tempted to lean back into him. “Should we get a few, then?” he asks, persuading his voice to move with difficulty. It’s hard with Sherlock’s distracting proximity. 

“Just two or three,” Sherlock says. “Unless you want more.” 

He moves off again and John is left wanting to follow, pulled into orbit around Sherlock’s form, but he holds himself back. 

Around the flat it’s much the same. John can’t even tell whether Sherlock is actively flirting, or whether Sherlock can tell that he is, either, because it’s all so minimal. Yet it feels tenuous, tentative, and so, so important. One night Sherlock comes into the loo as he’s shaving, not having done it that morning, and starts brushing his teeth. “You don’t mind, do you?” he asks as he squeezes paste onto his toothbrush, with just enough scoff to his tone to suggest that it would be silly for John to mind this infringement after everything they’ve been through together. 

John scrapes the razor carefully down his cheek, his mouth pursed, then dips the blade into a bowl of water and shakes his head. “Of course not.” 

Sherlock smiles at him in the mirror and John smiles back, and neither of them comment on the fact that they’re watching each other more than themselves in the mirror. Sherlock finishes and rinses his mouth and the toothbrush under the running water, but then instead of leaving, he hoists himself onto the counter to sit and watch John finish up, his back to the mirror. John sneaks a look at it and sees that he can still see the knobs of Sherlock’s spine through his thin t-shirt, though it’s better than it was. He rinses the razor off under the water, then pats his face down with a wet flannel. 

“Let me see,” Sherlock orders. 

Feeling a bit self-conscious, John tilts his face up and into the light. “Did I miss anywhere?” 

Sherlock bends close and studies him intently. “Give me the razor.”

John picks it up as though on auto-pilot, not pointing out that Sherlock could just tell him where and let him do it himself. Instead he finds himself handing the razor to Sherlock and waiting. Sherlock draws the blade very, very gently over a small patch near his jawline, then takes the flannel from John’s unresisting hand and pats the skin before running his finger tip over it. John’s suddenly glad that he’s still in his jeans because a flush of heat pools in his groin at this and suddenly the atmosphere is charged. Or is it only him? He doesn’t know. All he knows is that he can’t look Sherlock in the eye right now or else he will not be able to stop himself from making a move. Sherlock is right there on the counter; John could just step between his legs and pull their crotches flush together, take Sherlock right there on the counter. (No.) He hears himself exhale, not quite steadily. “Better?” he manages. 

Sherlock makes a low sound of approval almost like a purr. “Much,” he says with evident satisfaction. He gives the razor back to John and gets off the counter in one smooth motion, his long legs out of reach again. “Good night,” he says simply, and disappears into his bedroom, not closing the door all the way. 

“Good night,” John says, and looks at himself in the mirror. His cheeks feel hot and he sees that they’re a little flushed, too. (Could Sherlock see it?) He doesn’t know. 

Meanwhile it continues this way: John finds any shameless excuse possible to touch Sherlock, brushing unnecessarily past him, letting their fingers touch as they pass various objects back and forth. Tousling his messy curls while he’s sat in front of the microscope as he asks what Sherlock is studying (maggot decomposition, apparently). And Sherlock leans up against him without even looking at him. One day John comes downstairs before going to work and Sherlock is already up – or still up, possibly. He looks at John, frowns slightly, then gets up, plugs in the kettle, and comes over. Without saying a word he unbuttons John’s shirt and does it up again before John can even protest. “You buttoned it wrong,” he says, moving swiftly away. “Earl Grey or English Breakfast?” 

Flustered, John can barely even persuade himself to think of tea choices. “Er – Earl Grey,” he stutters, and Sherlock glances at him out of the corner of his eye, the ghost of a smirk hovering around his mouth, but he doesn’t say anything. 

*** 

One night they’re both sitting in their chairs, reading. Sherlock is reading some long thing called _The Bacterial Cell: A Study of Macromolecular Biosynthesis_ and John is reading a book about the Upanishads. Sherlock’s long legs are stretched across the narrow space between them, wedged in between John’s right thigh and the arm of his chair, one slender ankle crossed over the other, his feet bare. (John wants to touch those feet, feel the fine bone structure, massage them, press his thumbs into Sherlock’s arches and rub the strain out of his ankles. He is actively resisting the urge to do this.) Sherlock has lit the fire, so it’s warm in the sitting room and John’s feet are bare, too, rubbing against each other. 

“Why are you reading that?” Sherlock asks out of the blue, breaking the comfortable silence that’s all around them, warm as a blanket. 

John looks up from the page. “What kind of question is that?” he asks mildly. “Because it’s interesting?”

“You were baptised as a Catholic,” Sherlock points out. “Though I wouldn’t say you’re a particularly devout one.” 

John raises his eyebrows. “Hardly,” he says. “I’m more the sort who only even believes in God in emergencies.” 

Sherlock smiles slightly. “Like most people,” he says, tactfully not reminding John that he excludes himself from this. “So why bother about the Upanishads? You have a religion, if you want to be religious. Or is it just – academic interest? I’m just curious.”

John struggles for a moment. “I don’t know; it’s just interesting, I suppose. I always thought the Eastern religions were more interesting. Christianity is sort of been-there, done-that, you know? Plus I like the imagery.” 

Sherlock makes an interested sound. “Read me a bit,” he requests. 

John thinks, then goes back several pages. “There was a thing in here somewhere, hang on. I liked it, just the imagery. Okay, listen to this: _‘Within the city of Brahman, which is the body, there is the heart, and within the heart there is a little house. This house has the shape of a lotus, and within it dwells that which is to be sought after, inquired about, and realised. What then is that which, dwelling within this little house, this lotus of the heart, is to be sought after, inquired about, and realised?’_ That’s from the Chandogya Upanishad. I wonder sometimes about the concept of the soul and this makes me think of that. What it is within a person that makes him that person.”

Sherlock is watching him, not laughing or sneering at this, his eyes serious, thoughtful. His own (boring) book is in his lap, his hands steepled under his chin. “So what is it, then? At the centre of the lotus? Is it the soul that is sought after?” 

John frowns a bit, trying to put his thoughts into words, glad that Sherlock isn’t ridiculing him for wanting to discuss something purely metaphysical and illogical like this. “I think it is the soul, yeah. I think it has to do with truth and self-knowledge,” he says slowly. “I… haven’t always been particularly good with that. Maybe most of us aren’t, but – yeah. I think it’s about knowing who you are. What makes you yourself, unique and different from anyone else. And the space in the centre, the lotus-shaped house, should always be expanding, it says, which I take to mean that self-discovery should always be expanding.” 

Sherlock watches him for a long time, not saying anything, but he’s clearly thinking a great deal. Eventually he says, “Why is the house shaped like a lotus?” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” John says. “Lotuses are everywhere in Eastern mythology. I suppose because they grow locally? There are different colours for various stages. Pink is the highest level, I think. White is for most people, for the newly-awakened soul or something along those lines. There’s something about the way they grow, having to rise above sin or something. I’m less interested in that sort of thing and more interested in the whole self-discovery thing.” 

Sherlock makes a thoughtful sound. “Lotuses are water lilies,” he says. “They grow in shallow, murky water, but the leaves sit on the surface of the water and the flowers bloom well above the mud that lies beneath the surface. They’re also slow to bloom. It seems an apt analogy.”

It does, put that way. “Ah, so it’s about rising above the muck of daily life and all that,” John says. “I see.” Sherlock smiles and digs his long toes into John’s thigh and John pushes at them. “Stop that!” he says, not really meaning it, and that’s good because Sherlock doesn’t remove his feet, just stops poking John with them. And somehow John’s hand just ends up staying where it is on Sherlock’s ankle, and neither of them say anything about it, going back to their respective books and the warm, fire-lit silence of the room. 

*** 

Two days later John comes home from the clinic to find that Sherlock’s current experiment has been cleared off the table. In its centre is a large glass bowl, and floating within it are two white water lilies. No, John realises belatedly. Not water lilies: lotuses. Half-opened and very white, except for the yellow centres glimpsed through the unfolding petals. John looks at them and remembers what Sherlock said the other night about lotuses being slow to bloom, and feels his heart swell enormously within his chest. “Sherlock?” he calls. There is no answer; he must have gone out. Perhaps that’s for the best: if he were here right now, John has no doubt that he would not be able to stop himself from finding Sherlock, wherever he was, no matter what he was in the middle of doing, and snogging him stupid. And – although so much of this could be taken as strong hints that this is where things are headed, John still has the sense that this cannot be rushed. He doesn’t want to go charging in like a bull in a china shop, stomping blindly around and destroying this beautiful, delicate, still-fragile thing that’s building between them in their small touches and lingering looks and smiles, in the silences that form around them like a watchful, gentle third party, drawing them ever closer together, inevitably. He’s almost certain – but he wants to wait until it is completely, unmistakeably clear. And besides, the very building of it is so delicious in another way – he lies awake smiling to himself over tiny things like a particular slant to Sherlock’s eyes, the feeling of his hand on the small of his back as they crossed a road. The very slowness of it all is part of it, indicative of the size of what it’s all leading to, or so John fervently hopes. He knows very well that some part of him always wanted this. But once he knew that it was finished with Mary, he was able to stop burying it. He stopped trying. He always knew it was there. Now he’s merely letting it flourish. It’s not a secret – Sherlock could surely see it if he looked into his eyes long enough. It just has to happen in its own time. Like the blooming of a lotus, maybe. The metaphor is obvious enough. And there are two of them in the bowl, blooming slowly, quietly beside one another. Together. 

John closes his eyes and has to lean against the table, dizzy with the amount he feels for Sherlock. 

*** 

Later, Sherlock comes home with Indian takeaway and sets about preparing everything as John lays the table. John decides to bring it up, lightly. “I love the lotuses,” he says. “I don’t know where you found them in London in January, but they’re beautiful.”

“I thought so,” Sherlock says, sounding satisfied by this somehow. “I had to go to a few stores to find them.” 

He falls silent and John wants to ask if they’re for him, specifically, or just… to have about. “I love them,” he says instead, just in case they were for him. 

Sherlock makes a sound that might be pleased, but doesn’t say anything. “I got the vegetable korma that you like,” he says instead. “And butter chicken.” 

John sets down two wineglasses and studies the table. “And samosas, and basmati, and naan. Is it garlic naan?” he asks hopefully. 

Sherlock gives him an admonishing look that John knows he would hate to be told makes him look ever so slightly like Mycroft. “Of course it is,” he says sternly, as though reproaching John for having thought that he might have forgotten that John loves garlic naan particularly. 

John grins and goes to get the wine he bought on his way home from the clinic and had already uncorked to let breathe. It’s a Shiraz, one he chose only for the fact that its blurb was printed on the label. He pours two glasses and passes Sherlock the bottle. “Here,” he says. “I thought you might enjoy the blurb for this one.” 

“Aha!” Sherlock takes it from him and studies the label, then reads out: “‘This estate Shiraz from the Barossa Valley is an enticing red with an aromatic nose, concentrated plum and berry flavours, smoky with chocolate, and graceful finish.’” He looks up. “How can chocolate be smoky?” 

“The eternal questions engendered by the blurb,” John says. They both sit down and John lifts his glass to Sherlock. “Bon appétit.” 

“Shouldn’t we say something in Sanskrit or something?” Sherlock asks, holding his glass but not touching it to John’s. 

“We could, if either of us knew any Sanskrit,” John responds dryly. 

“I’m surprised you haven’t got that far in your readings,” Sherlock chides, a sly note of humour in his tone. He clears his throat, lifts his glass a little higher, and says with flourish, “ _Sarva kale sukhino bhavanthu_.” 

“Come again?” John asks, blinking. 

“If I said it correctly, I believe I just wished you eternal happiness,” Sherlock says, and touches his glass to John’s. 

John feels himself smiling. “Cheers,” he says. “I won’t try to repeat it.” 

“Best not,” Sherlock advises, smirking, and passes him the naan. 

Later, after Sherlock’s gone to his room, John putters about the kitchen, putting things away and straightening everything up. He turns off most of the lights, then glances toward Sherlock’s bedroom. Seeing that he isn’t coming out, John bends and sniffs the lotuses. They’re already more open than they were earlier. On a whim, he lifts the bowl and beneath it there is a small, white envelope laying facedown. John opens it quietly and slips the card out. It says: 

_John,_  
_To the ongoing expansion of your soul.  
_ _From a fellow seeker of truth and meaning. –S_

It’s written in his typical, slanted scrawl – but why didn’t he give it to John? Was he meant to discover it on his own like this? John stands in the kitchen for a long minute, deliberating, then decides to keep it to himself for now. But, John vows to himself, the next time they’re in the same room and something like this happens, he will absolutely make a move, if the timing feels right. He takes the card and envelope both and retreats quietly up to his room to read it over and over again. 

*** 

It all gets interrupted, however. There’s a case, an emotional one: a woman gets kidnapped and threatening notes are sent to her husband. The husband is beside himself with recrimination and anger, which puzzles Sherlock until it comes out that the wife underwent a secret operation to have a cancerous tumour removed. The husband knew nothing of it and was having an affair. In the end Sherlock proves that the wife set the entire thing up, arranging for her own abduction, ensuring that it was caught on CCTV, the footage of which was then sent anonymously to the husband. By the time everything is revealed, the husband is so frantically overjoyed to have his wife back that he doesn’t appear to care about the deception. After Sherlock and John confront her in her hotel room, she returns with them in the front seat of Lestrade’s squad car. 

“He knows everything?” she asks quietly in the car. 

“Everything,” Sherlock confirms. 

She turns her head to look out the window. “I wonder what he’ll say,” she says. 

“I think he’ll just be glad to have you home,” John tells her. 

He is. The car stops and she gets sheepishly out, and her husband literally falls to his knees, sobbing and begging her forgiveness. She starts crying immediately and apologising over top of him, and after a moment, Sherlock turns to John, lifting his brows in silent indication, and John nods. Lestrade also turns away from the now-embracing couple and mutters, “Well, that’s _that_ one solved. Well done. Thank you.”

“She would have revealed herself eventually,” Sherlock tells him. “They always do, when it’s a bid for attention.” 

Lestrade shrugs. “Pretty understandable this time, though,” he says. “I’m not going to charge her.” 

John feels relieved about this. The woman’s situation was pitiable. “Good,” he says. “I guess we’ll be going, then.” 

“Yeah.” Lestrade has a look at his watch. “Christ, is it already nine? I’m starving.” 

Sherlock looks at him, then spontaneously says, “You haven’t eaten since that doughnut this morning – poor choice for nutritional value, by the way. Why don’t you come over for dinner?” 

Lestrade and John both look at him in surprise. “Get away!” Lestrade says. “You serious?” 

“Certainly,” Sherlock says, frowning a little. “I can cook. So can John. And I don’t think we’ve ever had you over for an actual meal.”

“No, we haven’t,” John adds, thrilling inwardly at the _we_ and its implications. “Come. Sherlock’s a great cook, actually. I promise he won’t poison you.”

Lestrade narrows his eyes at Sherlock. “Didn’t you say at John’s wedding that you used to drug him?” he says, pointing at John. 

Sherlock waves this off. “That was a joke. Mostly. Are you going to come or not?” 

He sounds cross and John has to smile. “Sure, yeah, I’ll come,” Lestrade says. “Lemme stop and get a bottle of wine or something. I’ll just wrap up here and then be on my way.” 

“All right,” Sherlock says. “Come on, John.” He strides away, waiting half a beat for John to fall into step beside him instead just leaving him to run after him the way he used to, and they go to the nearest busy street to get a cab. 

“That was nice of you,” John says, meaning it. 

Sherlock shrugs, but there’s a hint of smile about his mouth. “He’s been living off microwave food for too long. It’s starting to rot his brain, not to mention his arteries. About time someone invited him somewhere, especially now that his second wife has left him.”

“Yeah.” John thinks of Lestrade all on his own and wonders that they never thought of this before. Though there wasn’t all that much of a _they_ before now. Perhaps this new thinking of others bit has something to do with their apparently mutual search for self-expansion. Or maybe they were just both always too self-absorbed. 

“What should we make?” Sherlock asks once they’re in the cab. 

John feels a stirring of interest; he’d just assumed that Sherlock would decide and cook and he would do something like lay the table and entertain Lestrade while Sherlock did gourmet things in the kitchen. He hadn’t considered having a say in the matter as such. “I don’t know. What do we have? What does he like?” 

Sherlock thinks for a moment. “Italian,” he says after a moment. “Particularly pasta. Nothing he would deem too ‘fancy’.”

“Pasta it is, then,” John says. 

“Text Lestrade and tell him white wine,” Sherlock says. He takes out his phone and starts typing a note to himself with both thumbs. 

John watches him for a moment, feeling terribly affectionate somehow at seeing Sherlock apply the same amount of focus and dedication to making dinner for a friend of theirs as he does for the all-important work. He sends the text ( _Sherlock says to bring white wine, any white. See you soon at ours!_ ) and subsides into silence until they’re inside. “Should I make a salad or something?” he asks as they’re going upstairs. 

“Yes,” Sherlock says decisively. “And I thought perhaps pesto, unless you think he would prefer something else? You know him better than I do.” 

“Do I?” John feels surprised by this. “I don’t know that I do, honestly. Pesto sounds delicious, though. What sort of salad should I make with it?” 

“You decide,” Sherlock tells him, opening the door to the flat. They go into the kitchen and set about taking things out of the fridge. John decides on a simple green salad rather than Caesar, as Sherlock will likely make a cream-based sauce for the pesto. 

He gets out a head of romaine lettuce and slices it, then rinses and spins it dry. Beside him at the counter, Sherlock is rapidly stripping basil leaves from their stems and dropping them into a food processor. He’s got a small container of pine nuts, several cloves of garlic, and a bottle of olive oil nearby, but John doesn’t see the parmesan. He goes back to the fridge to see what else they’ve got for salad and gets out the parmesan while he’s there. He deposits his selections by his lettuce, then takes the cheese over to Sherlock, putting his arm almost around him – in the guise of simply putting a hand on his shoulder and says, “You forgot the parmesan.” 

Sherlock looks at it and leans into him, only just perceptibly. “So I did. Thank you, John.” He smiles at John and John smiles back, feeling a rush of butterflies in his belly at this small exchange. 

He makes himself let go and goes back to his salad. The lotuses are still on the table, the petals nearly all the way open now, and neither of them have mentioned the card Sherlock hid beneath the bowl over the last three days of the case. John assumes that Sherlock has checked and seen that he found it. It feels as though everything is nearly there, nearly in place – it’s all just hovering beneath the surface, unspoken. Now isn’t the time; they’re expecting Lestrade in a few minutes and they have the task of preparing dinner to take care of. He slices cherry tomatoes and chops roasted pecans as Sherlock blends the pesto, and is busy cutting spring onion when Sherlock comes and leans over his shoulder, his front pressing into John’s back, but only ever so slightly. 

“Nice,” he comments, his tone casual, but his voice is low and his mouth is rather close to John’s ear. “That looks good.”

John’s pulse speeds up so much that he’s sure it must be visible, and to Sherlock it almost certainly would be. “You should put the water on for the pasta,” he says, managing not to stutter. 

Sherlock’s hand settles onto his waist like a ghost. “I already have,” he says, his voice like velvet. “Shall I make a dressing for that? A balsamic?” 

John swallows. He can feel Sherlock practically all around him, his presence heady, one arm curving around his back, the heat of his body spilling against him. It’s all he can do to keep himself from turning around, his back up against the counter, to look into Sherlock’s eyes and see if that will be enough to make it happen at last. Instead, he forces himself to sound as normal as he possibly can. “That would be great,” he says with difficulty. He clears his throat, and Sherlock exhales through his nose, just quickly enough that it might have been a laugh. He releases John and John feels the loss immediately, his heart beating hard. If Sherlock is actively trying to seduce him, he’s definitely going about it the right way – on every level. It’s ridiculous but even with the case on, John has slept with Sherlock’s card under his pillow like a teenager ever since he found it – even though the words aren’t particularly romantic. It’s just that Sherlock wrote something that he knew would mean something to him, and it does mean something. 

The doorbell rings then and they both listen to see if Mrs Hudson will get it. She does, exclaiming over Lestrade’s tired appearance, then hears a brief summary of the case and his invitation to dinner, and sends him up. She sounds pleased, John thinks. Well: they’ve never actually had anyone over to dinner before apart from her. It was overdue, maybe. She probably approves of this foray into social normalcy. 

Lestrade comes up and in without bothering to knock; the flat door was open anyway. “Smells delicious in here,” he says by way of greeting. He comes into the kitchen and gestures with his bottle of wine. “I brought wine,” he offers unnecessarily. 

John goes to take it from him. “That’s great, thanks,” he says. He peers at the label. “A soave.”

Sherlock comes over to have a look. “Is there a blurb?” he asks, his eyes gleaming. 

“A blurb?” Lestrade repeats, looking at Sherlock. “What do you mean?” 

“He means one of those little write-ups describing the wine,” John tells him. “We like to make fun of them. And yes,” he says to Sherlock. “We’re in luck: there is!”

Sherlock puts his hand on John’s opposite shoulder, again rather like putting his arm around him but not quite. “Read it,” he orders. 

John clears his throat. “The Soave Superiore, Dal Cero, Tenuta di Corte Giacobbe, Runcata 2011,” he declaims, trying not to mangle the Italian too badly. “‘Pure Garganega vinified in large botti, with three pickings from the same vineyard so a range of ripeness to add further complexity. A touch of oak on both nose and palate, with dry honeyed fruit and firm mineral notes. The oak is very nicely integrated.’”

“Well, we couldn’t have had the oak hanging about on the edges, feeling excluded,” Sherlock says, smirking, and Lestrade laughs. “Why don’t you open it?” he adds, to John. “I’ll just finish up the pasta.” 

“Sure,” John says, going to look for a corkscrew. 

“Is there something I can do?” Lestrade asks, and John thinks for a moment that this feels ever so slightly bizarre, just doing something normal like this all together. 

“Yeah, you can help me lay the table, if you like. I haven’t had a chance yet.” Finding a corkscrew in one of the drawers, he takes the wine to the counter and uncorks it as Lestrade wanders over to the cupboards in search of plates. “Yeah, that one,” John says. “Just let me give the table a wipe first – you never know what’s been on it.” 

“And I’m sure I don’t want to,” Lestrade says, very dryly. 

Sherlock turns from the pasta and gives Lestrade one of those overly-wide, slightly frightening smiles of his. “You don’t,” he says cheerily and John can’t help but laugh. 

He notes that Sherlock’s eyes follow him to the table as he goes over to wipe it clean, rather than turning back to his pan, and he knows why. He passes the cloth over the whole surface – it isn’t strictly necessary; Sherlock is always good about disinfecting the surface after he’s had an experiment going, and he hasn’t had one since before he bought the lotuses anyway, but it can’t hurt – if only to reassure their guest. He lifts the bowl of lotuses and wipes the empty space underneath, carefully keeping his eyes on the table, but he can feel Sherlock’s boring into him. He can’t help it, though. He glances up and their eyes meet, the information that John has indeed found the card passing between them as plainly as if one of them said it aloud. John’s heart begins to race again. He breaks the eye contact and replaces the bowl, going over to the sink to rinse the cloth as Lestrade begins to set plates out, unaware that something enormous has just happened without his even noticing. John files away the look in Sherlock’s eyes meanwhile, the slight uncertainty around his mouth, the almost-smile. Once Lestrade has gone home, then, he decides. Then they’ll talk about it. Finally. 

It’s there with them as they eat, the awareness, not pestering to make itself known, just – there. Like one of their companionable silences, only far more warming, the fire of its knowledge stirring in John’s gut every time his eyes meet Sherlock’s, no matter what they’re all talking about. Their hands touch once or twice as they pass things to each other and each time John feels it with his entire being, the contact resounding throughout his body and heart both. 

Lestrade compliments their cooking and Sherlock makes gentle fun of the ‘dry honeyed fruit’ and ‘firm mineral notes’ of the wine. John just says it’s a good wine, and it is. He doesn’t know about mineral notes, but it’s light and crisp and goes perfectly with the creamy tang of Sherlock’s pesto cream sauce. Afterwards as they’re chatting over coffee, Sherlock offers the lemon sorbet that they’ve got in the freezer but Lestrade declines, saying that he’s stuffed and also bushed. “I don’t want to eat and run, but I’m absolutely beat,” he says. “I’m surprised you two even had the energy to cook.”

Sherlock shrugs modestly. “I’m sure we’ll all sleep well tonight,” he says diplomatically. 

“And no need to stand on ceremony here,” John tells him. “If you’re tired, go on and go home. It’s after eleven as it is.” 

“If you don’t mind, I might, then,” Lestrade says, and gets up. He looks around. “What should I do with my plate?” 

“Not a thing,” John says firmly. “We’ll deal with this. Go and get some sleep.” 

Lestrade nods. “Okay, then. Thanks, you two. As ever, I couldn’t have solved this without you. I never would have known to check the woman’s cat food supply.” 

Sherlock smiles and doesn’t say anything mean. “Pleasure,” he says instead. “Thanks for coming.”

“Yeah, thanks,” John adds, and Lestrade goes and puts his coat and shoes on. After he leaves, John goes to the window to watch him trying to hail a taxi. “It’s beginning to snow,” he says. 

Sherlock comes over to join him at the window. “Is it?” he asks lightly, but the fact that they’re finally alone together is what they’re both thinking of, John feels certain. He puts an arm around John’s shoulders, properly this time, his forearm dangling over it as they watch Lestrade get into a cab. 

John hesitates for exactly one second, then puts his own arm firmly around Sherlock’s back. He turns his head to look at Sherlock, about to open his mouth and say something at last. Their eyes meet, and without a word, Sherlock swiftly bends his head and kisses him. It didn’t even need saying in the end, John thinks, and then he closes his eyes and stops thinking entirely, kissing back without reservation, and even though it’s just lips-on-lips, it sweeps over him like a dizzy wave. He reaches up for Sherlock’s face with his other hand, turning his body to face him, and Sherlock’s other arm comes around his back in a full-on embrace. They kiss and kiss, their mouths parting and meeting again over and over again. John starts to lip at Sherlock’s full lower one and Sherlock catches on and opens his mouth. It feels novel, yet not awkward – almost like learning to kiss for the first time all over again. It’s obviously a bit unfamiliar to Sherlock but not at all hesitant. Just new. He follows John’s example, kissing back hungrily, and when John finds Sherlock’s tongue with his own, Sherlock makes a sound deep in his throat, his arms tightening around him. 

It’s so powerful for John that he almost thinks that Sherlock might be holding him up, that his knees might have given out. They’re leaning against each other and there’s no hurry to this at all, just a feeling of quenching a deep thirst after a long time. It feels like _finally, at last, perfection_ , and John is swimming in it, thrilling from head to toe. He wonders if people can see them from the street, silhouetted in the window through the falling snow, Sherlock’s taller form bent over him. John’s hand is tangled in the curls at the back of Sherlock’s head and Sherlock’s fingers are gripping him tightly. 

Finally they break apart and John doesn’t know if it’s been hours or only minutes, but they’re there, blinking at each other and wondering which words to say first. “You saw the card,” Sherlock says, his voice low and intimate. 

“The very day you brought the lotuses home,” John confesses. “I wasn’t quite sure what to think, if the lotuses were meant to be for me specifically or just for the flat in general, or what, but then I found your card.” 

“I couldn’t decide whether or not to give it to you,” Sherlock admits, the corner of his mouth quirking. “In the end I decided to just leave it there and see if you would find it, and if you did, what you would do with it. Not that it said anything particularly – incriminating, but – ”

“No, but it meant something to me anyway,” John tells him, smiling. “And I love that you went to bunch of different stores looking for white lotuses. How many did you go to?” 

“Eight,” Sherlock says, and John laughs and draws him down to kiss him again. It goes on for a longish while, and John can feel Sherlock’s heart beating hard against his chest and knows that his is doing the same thing. “I wasn’t sure – I still wasn’t sure what you meant,” Sherlock corrects himself, “about living here for good, not dating any more, all of that. I hoped you meant – this, but I wasn’t – so I didn’t – ”

“It’s fine,” John tells him, and it is. “I wasn’t completely sure what you wanted, either, so I just thought perhaps we should just let it happen in its own time. Some things take time to bloom, after all.” 

Sherlock smiles and kisses him again. After, he releases John and says, simply, “Well – good night.” 

John feels slightly surprised for a moment – not only is this rather abrupt, but somehow he’d thought that perhaps this would just spill over into the night. However, he reminds himself firmly that Sherlock is rather inexperienced in all of this, and that just because they’ve kissed and talked at last, it doesn’t mean that the unfolding process is finished. Some things just have to happen in their own time, as he just said. “Good night,” he says, smiling at Sherlock, and with that, they part ways and go to their own rooms. 

*** 

John putters about his room for awhile, smiling to himself and far too happy to sleep just yet. He takes off his clothes and hangs them up and gets into bed in his underwear and tries to read for awhile, sitting up against the headboard. He can’t focus, though, so eventually he puts the book down on the night stand and folds his arms behind his head, smiling up at the ceiling like an idiot. He plays over every moment of their kissing in his head, his skin alive with goose bumps just thinking of it and he wishes he knew when the next time will be. He doesn’t want to push Sherlock but it’s as though his hunger for him has only grown, now that he’s tasted what it’s like. If Sherlock wants to take things slowly, fine. He absolutely will not ask for too much too soon. But the feeling of Sherlock’s mouth on his at last is absolutely indescribable. John can hear his own internal monologue and shakes his head at himself – he sounds like a lovesick teenager, not a grown man of forty-one – but it doesn’t matter. He’s turned on as hell, too, but he almost doesn’t want to taint these infinitely precious, long-awaited kisses with anything as tawdry as touching himself over it. He sighs and slides down in the bed, then swings his legs over the side, sitting up, the blankets pushed back. 

Just then he hears the floor downstairs creaking and wonders what Sherlock is doing. The footsteps come nearer and – is he? – yes, he is, he’s coming upstairs. John’s heart starts racing again and he makes himself stay where he is. Sherlock reaches the top of the stairs, pauses, then knocks. “Come in!” John calls, his heart in his throat. 

The door opens and Sherlock steps into the doorway, looking a bit uncertain. “Hello,” he says hesitantly. He slides just into the room, closing the door after him, but stays where he is. He’s changed into pyjama pants and an old t-shirt that he sleeps in. “Um. I – maybe this is – I just wondered if perhaps – ” 

He certainly didn’t seem this nervous about all of his recent flirting John thinks, charmed and bemused. “Yes?” he prompts. 

Sherlock rubs self-consciously at the back of his neck. “I wondered if I could – change my mind?” he asks awkwardly, but before John can panic too much, he adds, “I mean – I wondered if maybe that could – not be over just yet.”

“Oh, God, yes!” John says, in abject relief on more than one count. “I thought you were going to say that you’d changed your mind about – all of this!” 

Sherlock smiles, his shoulders relaxing. “Not much chance of that.” John pats the bed beside him wordlessly and Sherlock comes over and sits down. “I don’t know exactly how to just – start,” Sherlock admits. “But I can’t make myself think of anything else. I was trying to get ready to sleep, but – I just want to – ”

John leans over and shuts him up with his mouth, and Sherlock relaxes tangibly, sighing into the kiss, opening his mouth to John’s and winding his long arms around John’s shoulders. His tongue reaches for John’s first this time and it’s so slow and so intimate that John feels like he could accurately draw a map of every taste bud on Sherlock’s tongue, recreated from every slide of them against his own. It’s so good, that same bone-deep feeling of having a craving sated, only to have it create ever deeper wells of craving, of sheer need. They part for breath after several long, absolutely fantastic minutes of this, and John murmurs, his pulse thudding in his throat, “Is that what you wanted?” 

Sherlock nods, his eyes still closed. They open then, searching John’s. “I’ve wanted it for a long time,” he says, the words completely unfiltered, undressed in any sort of pretence or game. Just naked and honest and they tear a layer of skin off John’s heart. 

“Me too,” he says, trying for the same level of honesty, which isn’t hard in the face of Sherlock’s open, vulnerable face. “I really made a mess of things, with Mary. I don’t mean ‘with Mary’; I mean with having married her in the first place. Going back to her. I knew even as I was trying to take her back that it was a mistake and that I didn’t want it at all. I can’t believe now that I lasted all of nine days, when all along I knew that I wanted to be here, with you. I wanted to come home and just tell you that I was never going to leave again. Never going to leave _you_.”

“Even after both our conversations about what that meant, I still didn’t know,” Sherlock says. “I wanted to ask but I was afraid of scaring you off again. I thought you were implying that, sort of, but I wasn’t certain.” 

“And I didn’t want to come out and say it explicitly in case you didn’t want that, or it was just too soon,” John admits. “I think it might have been a little bit too soon. I think it needed a bit of time to develop on its own.” 

“Like a lotus,” Sherlock says. “The parallel hadn’t missed me.”

John looks into his eyes and feels his heart swelling even more. He leans closer to Sherlock. “I crave you, you know. The more we kiss, the more I want to kiss you. So kiss me.” 

Sherlock doesn’t bother replying, just closes the space between them and puts his mouth back on John’s, his arms holding John as tightly as he can, stroking over his back and into his hair and John lets himself go, falling into it, falling impossibly even more deeply for Sherlock. He’s more than a little aroused now and wonders if Sherlock will notice or be bothered by it, but Sherlock’s hands are roving further afield than his are. Sherlock breaks off the kiss awhile later and takes John’s hand and puts it over his heart, which is galloping as though he’s just run a marathon. “That’s what you do to me,” he says, his eyes on John’s, and John’s heart nearly combusts. 

He kisses Sherlock on the chin, the throat, the neck, his hand tightening over that place on his chest, rubbing against the nipple as it peaks beneath his t-shirt. He can feel Sherlock’s breath rasping in his throat through his mouth and tongue. “It’s what you do to me, too,” he says into the salt tang of Sherlock’s skin, licking it. “I want you – I want you in every way there is to want another person. I don’t want to push anything but – I have to say it. I want you so much.”

Sherlock takes his face and turns it upward to look him in the eye. “Likewise,” he says, rather intensely. “I want all of that – with you. I know I’m not – that I haven’t – but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want it. I want it rather badly, in fact.” 

John searches his eyes for a moment. “Do you?” he asks, needing to hear it said directly. 

In answer, Sherlock moves his hand from his chest down to the hardness between his legs and they both groan as John’s hand closes around it through the worn cotton of the pants, his fingers finding the softness of Sherlock’s balls just behind. “I want this,” Sherlock says again, his eyes locked on John’s, pupils huge in the dim light of the bedroom. “I want you.”

“Then have me,” John tells him, meaning it completely. “I don’t know much about this sort of thing, either, honestly – and I don’t care. You can have me any way you want me, any time you want me, starting right here and now.” 

“J – ” Sherlock doesn’t make it through his name, reaching for him again with his hands and mouth both, and this kiss is much more desperate, needy on both sides, Sherlock leaning so far into him that John is on his back the next second, Sherlock on top of him, his arms dug under John in a way that should be uncomfortable, yet isn’t at all. Their cocks are touching through Sherlock’s pyjama pants and John’s underwear. They’re writhing against each other, the friction delicious even through the layers separating them, and John wants more of it, wants to feel Sherlock against him just skin against skin, at last.

He pulls Sherlock’s t-shirt up and hauls it over his head and Sherlock vocalises his agreement, and then they’re both pushing and pulling at Sherlock’s pyjama pants and then John’s underwear. Everything is shoved to the floor and then Sherlock’s gloriously naked body is spreading over him again, warm, his cheeks and chest flushed, and John’s hands are stuck to his skin like magnets. He touches Sherlock’s back and shoulders as they kiss frantically, then lets himself go and grips both of Sherlock’s perfect arse cheeks as Sherlock pants into his mouth and thrusts against him. Sherlock’s very neediness, his hunger for this, is fuelling John’s lust like petrol, his cock harder than anything, trapped against Sherlock’s between their bodies. Sherlock’s movements are teetering on the edge of his control, obviously unfamiliar but sheer want is outweighing that. He’s trembling and his cock is already leaking against John’s. John throws himself into the storm of Sherlock’s need, holding on as tightly as he can. He would reassure Sherlock with his limbs, if not his words, but his own need is nearly as desperate as Sherlock’s. “Is this – is this what you wanted?” he gets out. 

Sherlock’s agreement is raw, his voice rasping in his throat, no words forming. 

“Have you thought about this?” The question comes out in a gasp as Sherlock’s teeth close over his left ear lobe. “What you want us to do?” 

“I want to touch you everywhere,” Sherlock says, his mouth mashed against John’s neck, his breath hot. “I want to be inside you with my hands, my tongue, my – and I want you to do all of that to me, too.” 

“Absolutely,” John tells him, panting and squeezing his arse and marvelling to himself that he’s actually permitted to do this now. 

Sherlock makes a sound that’s even more desperate and pulls John’s arse up, his cock fitting into the cleft of it easily, but John feels a twinge of slight alarm. Or not alarm, exactly, because he meant it when he said he’d be up for that, but – 

“Wait,” he starts, not wanting to deny Sherlock _anything_ right now, but this is important. “It’s not that I – I meant it when I said – but this takes preparation, and right now we both – ” Sherlock stops and looks up at him, John’s words only partly connecting in his head, his gaze flooded with lust and ever so slightly confused. John decides to take matters into his own hands, quite literally. He reaches down and grasps Sherlock’s cock, groaning at the feel of it, hard and hot and full in his fist, and begins to rub. Sherlock is already so close to the edge that it’s not going to take much to push him over it, he thinks, and he’s correct. He grips and rubs, Sherlock’s eyes on his, his lips parted, breathing hard, every nerve ending in his body quivering with arousal, and then his eyes squeeze shut and he cries out against his own volition, his cock pulsing and shuddering in John’s hand as he comes, hot, heavy streams of release spurting out and onto John’s belly and chest. He tenses and thrusts hard into John’s fist again, coming some more, and John is so aroused that he could be drooling with it for all he knows, literally gagging for it. Sherlock exhales hard and his body goes limp, sagging against him, but he doesn’t forget about John. 

“I want – ” he starts, then puts his mouth back on John’s, still panting, still thrusting a little against his thigh as his long fingers wrap themselves around John’s cock and mimic what he was doing, rubbing and tugging at it, mercifully not too gently – John’s always had issues with girlfriends who were far too delicate about that sort of thing – but now he’s being rubbed into ecstasy, panting, his body already starting to spasm as Sherlock jerks him off. As his orgasm begins to circle tighter and tighter around his body, Sherlock’s noises reflect it as if it’s his own, his voice rising as John’s cock twitches in his hand. It’s there – John comes with a shout, clutching at Sherlock’s shoulders with both his clean and sticky hands, and shoots off all over Sherlock and himself, his arse clenching and clenching as the flood of pleasure rolls over him, overwhelming him completely, his breath stopping as the blood pounds in his ears. 

He falls back against the sheets, his back sweaty, and doesn’t release Sherlock, breathing hard into his neck and probably ear as they come down together. Sherlock’s weight is heavy on him in a way that’s just different from any woman’s, distributed differently in his long, smooth, muscular back and limbs, the breadth of his shoulders. They’re both sweating, Sherlock’s back and face warm with it and the scent of it is all around them and John doesn’t even try to deny to himself that he loves it. Sherlock’s body is still spasming, shocks running down his spine. He picks up his face from where it was buried in John’s neck and puts both thumbs on John’s face, his eyes searching John’s, but he doesn’t say anything, just looks directly into him, or so John feels. He’s never felt so strongly connected to someone after sex – and this was, all boiled down, just a hand job in the end. The thought of how powerful actual, penetrative intercourse is going to feel is a breathtaking thought. But even as it is, if there was any doubt in him that Sherlock possesses him, body, heart, and soul, it’s gone now. 

John gazes steadily back up at him and reaches up to touch Sherlock’s face, too. “Was that – all right?” he asks, trying to keep his voice steady. He knows it was, but wants to check in, see how Sherlock is feeling about all this. 

“Past tense,” Sherlock says, the smallest of lines appearing between his eyes. 

John doesn’t get it. “What?” 

“Past tense,” Sherlock repeats. “‘ _Was_ that all right?’ It’s not over yet, is it? Can’t we keep going? Proportionally speaking, that was far too short compared to the amount of time I’ve waited for it.”

John begins to smile. “Of course we can keep going,” he promises. “I’ve got nothing on tomorrow, and I wouldn’t care if I did.” He means it; any fatigue from the sleepless nights during the case has been forgotten at this point. All that matters is Sherlock. 

A bit of smile is playing around Sherlock’s mouth, too. “I don’t want to stop. It’s even better than I imagined it might be. I want to do it again as soon as possible. How long does it take?” 

“Er, depends on the body,” John says. “I don’t know how it’ll be for you, but I’ll need at least a little while before we can go again.”

“Define ‘a little while’,” Sherlock requests, touching John’s lower lip with his thumb. 

“I don’t know, maybe around thirty, forty minutes?” John tries. “I’m not exactly twenty any more, you realise.” 

He sounds defensive, he knows, but Sherlock doesn’t appear to be fazed. “Oh, good,” he says. “Then there’s time for other things. I want to know every inch of you. I want to touch you everywhere, taste you. Can I – is that – ?”

John smiles at him again, feeling ridiculous amounts of affection pooling and spilling out of him uncontrollably. “Listen,” he says, his voice going a bit rough. “There’s nothing that’s whatever you’re thinking. Weird, awkward, bizarre – it’s all fine. I mean that. We can do anything you like. It’s just that that one thing takes more time than either of us would have wanted at the moment, I thought. But it’s absolutely on the table. And for now, do whatever you like. I’m all yours.” 

Sherlock blinks down at him, then a slow, secret sort of smile comes over his face, one that John has never seen before. He strokes the hair back from John’s forehead and bends to kiss him again, slowly – exquisitely slowly – and John gets his legs and arms all around Sherlock’s back as they kiss, feeling as though he’s drowning in his own passion for Sherlock. All of those tiny gestures and touches and leanings and exchanged glances – it was all _this_ in disguise, lurking just beneath the surface. It’s absolutely incredible, he thinks dizzily, kissing Sherlock with all of his strength. Sherlock breaks away after a moment. “What’s this?” he asks, but the question answers itself: he’s found the card for the lotuses under John’s pillow. His eyes move from it to John’s, almost accusing. “You were sleeping with this?” he asks. 

John feels slightly embarrassed, but doesn’t deny it. “I was,” he admits. “I told you it meant a lot to me.” 

“John – ” Sherlock reaches for him again and John rolls them over so that he’s on top, their bodies rubbing together, legs tangled, tongues pressing into each other’s, breath hot, and it feels like some phenomenal, semi-magical dream that will evaporate the instant he wakes up. He kisses Sherlock’s long, pale neck, damp with sweat, tastes his skin, presses his lips and tongue to it. 

“You’re gorgeous, you know,” he says, his mouth on Sherlock’s skin. “I’ve wanted to touch you so much – some days I think my fingers were just itching to be on your skin, just to feel you.” 

Sherlock makes a humming sound that could be amusement or approval. Approval, John decides as he kisses his way down to Sherlock’s chest and the sound repeats itself, turning sharp as John’s tongue circles and presses into his left nipple. He knows he just told Sherlock he could do whatever he wanted and he doesn’t mean to take over, but – it’s difficult to resist the urge to give in to the temptation to do this at last. He nips at Sherlock’s nipple with his teeth, very gently, and Sherlock exhales heavily, then suddenly arches up and flips John onto his back. “Let me try that,” he says, not quite requesting, not quite dictating, and John acquiesces either way. Sherlock starts with John’s right nipple, his large hand squeezing over the opposite pec at the same time. John shivers and Sherlock makes that same, approving sound. He moves to the other side after a moment, licks for a moment, then examines it, licks again. His gaze is intense, filing away every micro-reaction on John’s part. He takes his time, his nose and tongue prodding into every uninteresting corner of John’s torso, even smelling and tasting under his arms (which gets a slightly awkward laugh on John’s part). By the time he gets to John’s belly, John’s cock has started to swell again. Sherlock notes this instantly, a warm hand sliding up the outside of his thigh, his thumb resting on John’s hip bone. He looks up the length of John’s body at him. “I’ve always wanted to try this,” he says in a tone of slightly shameful admission. “But – you know I don’t know what I’m doing – I’ve never – been party to this activity, on either – so I – ”

This isn’t exactly unexpected, but it’s still a bit mind-boggling – and tragic – to John. “You’ve never had a blow job?” he asks gently. He knew this, really, but still. 

Sherlock shakes his head minutely. “Someone offered, once. A very long time ago. I didn’t – it didn’t seem worth it.”

“The effort?” John keeps his voice soft. 

“The – risk,” Sherlock says, and doesn’t elaborate. John thinks he probably means the emotional risk, getting too close to someone. “Either way, it’s a moot point now. I’m just saying that you have to tell me if I… get it wrong. If I do something you don’t like.”

“I will,” John promises. “Just – try to avoid teeth, yeah? That’s about it.”

Sherlock frowns at him. “There’s definitely more to the technique than that,” he objects. “There has to be.”

John’s mouth twists into a grin. “Yeah, but I’m not all that picky when it comes to this. I _really_ like this, and it hasn’t happened in longer than I can remember, honestly. I won’t be complaining. You can experiment. Try different things. I’m sure that anyone who observes as acutely as you do will have me figured out better than I know myself within a minute or two.”

Sherlock’s lips purse as he files this away on whatever shelf of his mind palace sexual information about John goes, or so John assumes, then he reaches for John’s cock, looking at it as he holds it. Just talking about blow jobs has made him harder, and Sherlock scrutinising him is both agonising and strangely making him even harder. Sherlock leans forward and licks at the head and John groans; he can’t help himself. Sherlock’s eyes are instantly on him and he does it again, obviously angling for the same sound, so John doesn’t hold it back. Sherlock keeps his eyes on John’s and slides his mouth over the tip of John’s cock, his tongue coming out to touch it a moment later, almost like an afterthought, and John’s breath punches out in a gust. Just seeing Sherlock’s mouth around him is like a pornographic dream, and Sherlock’s eyes, open and vulnerable and watching him intently, has made it impossible to close off the path to his heart and just concentrate on the sexual side of things the way he often does. (Even with Mary – how many times was he actually thinking of _her_ when they were together, he wonders in passing. Not more than twice or three times at the most. Not with Sherlock. This is going to be different. It already is.) 

The eye contact holds as Sherlock begins to slide his mouth up and down John’s now achingly hard erection, lying in the open vee of John’s thighs. After a moment or two, he remembers his hands and begins to rub at John’s hip with the free one while the other continues to squeeze at the base of his cock. John is trembling from head to toe, awash with the sensation of the most beautiful mouth he has ever seen sucking at his cock, the most sensitive part of him. “That’s – that’s amazing,” he stutters, barely able to talk around the sensation. “It feels so good – so good, Sher – ah, oh God, yes, just like that – ahh!” He isn’t feigning a thing; Sherlock has gained speed and is figuring out how to coordinate his lips and tongue and the movement, the suction, and it’s coalescing into a silvery cord of pleasure leaking out his cock and into the hot haven of Sherlock’s mouth. His fists are balled in the sheets and he’s fighting to keep from thrusting into the ring of Sherlock’s lips. 

Sherlock lifts his mouth off but keeps stroking with the hand that’s there. “Any – directions?” he requests. 

“No! Just – keep going!” John pants. “Please!”

Sherlock looks pleased and there’s a flash of smirk before he resumes what he was doing, only harder, as though determined to suck John’s orgasm up from the depths of his toes. The next several minutes turn into a blur of blinding white pleasure as John hears himself crying out, trying to get out a warning to Sherlock in time and either it’s too late or too inarticulate because the next thing he knows, he’s flooding Sherlock’s mouth with come and Sherlock is choking a little but swallowing it down all the same. After the first big burst, there’s another, then Sherlock pulls back enough to catch the smaller spurts and dribbles on his lips and tongue, his hand still working over John’s cock, squeezing the last of it out. 

John’s cock is shivery with oversensitivity and after a few moments he has to pull himself away. “Come here,” he says, his voice hoarse from shouting. He gets Sherlock on top of him, well aware of the stiffness of Sherlock’s erection bumping into his legs. Sherlock lets himself be pulled down and kissed thoroughly, John’s hands running over his sides and massaging the perfection which is his arse. As they kiss, John can feel Sherlock writhing against him, unable to keep from rubbing himself against his body, can feel his desperation. “You’re amazing,” he tells Sherlock between kisses. “You’re absolutely phenomenal.” 

“John – ” It’s a groan and John grins, knowing how effective his compliments can be on Sherlock. “Please, I – doing that was – I need – ”

He’s become fully inarticulate and John takes pity on him, rolling Sherlock onto his back and shifting down his body. He could draw this out and really do a good job, but going down on a man can’t be compared to going down on a woman. Not that he’s ever tried the former, but there’s no need to build up to the big moment here – Sherlock is practically begging already, the need sweating off him in beads, his cock flushed and stiff, lying against his smooth, flat stomach. John takes it in hand and doesn’t waste any time getting his mouth on it, though he wants to start gently. Sherlock’s entire body jolts as though an electric charge has just run through him and he gasps, even his breath shaking. He makes a sound that might be the beginning of John’s name, but he can’t actually articulate it. John eases off again, kissing right where the salty fluid is oozing visibly out of Sherlock’s cock, swiping his tongue over it. It occurs to him again that this is one of the ultimate expressions of physicalised love, doing this for someone. All give, no take. “Okay?” he asks, keeping his voice steady and soothing, as though calming a skittish animal. 

Sherlock’s lips are parted, his long fingers clenched in the sheets the way John’s were. “Y-yes,” he gets out, his cheeks bright with colour, his forehead knit. 

“It’s not too much?” John waits, not wanting to overwhelm him. 

Sherlock shakes his head. “Keep going,” he requests. 

“You can put your hands in my hair, if you want,” John offers. “I don’t mind.” He puts his mouth on Sherlock again without waiting to see if he’ll take the suggestion, and is rewarded by another gasped intake of breath, tremors passing through Sherlock’s torso and long legs. John laves his tongue down the shaft of Sherlock’s cock, kissing and licking and stroking, turns his head sideways to feel the texture of his balls, the skin crinkled and softly hairy, aware that Sherlock is panting so quickly he sounds on the verge of hyperventilation. He feels a fierce stab of anger that no one has ever done this for Sherlock before: loved him, let him feel it tangibly, pressed love into his skin with lips and tongue and hands, lavished love on this sensitive, vulnerable part of his body. It’s not fair. Never again, he vows to himself. He will always, always make Sherlock feel loved. Even when he’s being a dick. No exceptions. He hasn’t always been terribly patient with Sherlock in the past, but understanding him better and being able to finally let himself love him, openly and plainly will help, he thinks. He takes Sherlock’s cock into his mouth again, tasting the sharpness of his precome, and starts the blow job in earnest, sucking and rubbing and doing his best to reproduce all of the things he’s always liked best, himself. 

Sherlock is panting raggedly, and now he does puts his hands in John’s hair, not trying to speak – well past that point, John rather thinks – and doesn’t try to steer or thrust into John’s mouth, just lies still, quivering, every nerve in his body taut with need, and lets John do this for him. When his gasps grow shallower and even faster, the taste changes slightly and John steels himself. He is perfectly prepared to swallow down Sherlock’s release, show him that nothing about him, about this, is disgusting or strange or unwelcome. He sucks the head of Sherlock’s cock, kissing it as his hand works rapidly against the hard, swollen flesh, and then Sherlock’s gasp gets suspended in his throat as his entire body goes rigid. He comes harder than he did the first time, which surprises John – he’s always been the other way around, coming less every successive time, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t choke, swallowing and licking his lips and Sherlock’s cock and consuming him, this part of him that literally no one has ever tasted, and relishes it. 

When the orgasm has spent itself, John plants kisses on Sherlock’s inner thighs and hipbones and stomach, slowly working his way back up his body. Sherlock’s hands grasp limply at his back, still breathing hard, his heart thudding visibly in his chest, but he turns his face to John’s and kisses him for a long, heartfelt moment. There are things to say, but John’s body is slow and sated and lying there, half on and half beside Sherlock, somehow sleep washes over him before either of them can say a word. 

*** 

He doesn’t wake until it’s light outside, but Sherlock is right there where he was when they fell asleep, his breathing light and regular. He stirs as soon as John wakes, though, blinking and looking momentarily disoriented. His eyes open and focus on John and then his face smiles, possibly without any conscious volition on his mind’s part. Just that, his instinctive reaction, makes John smile back. Their bodies are still overlapping, one of John’s arms draped over Sherlock’s chest and shoulder. He hopes he hasn’t drooled in his sleep or snored too loudly. “Morning,” he says, still smiling into Sherlock’s sleepy eyes. 

“Good morning,” Sherlock says, his baritone deeper and rougher than usual. (It’s enormously sexy, John thinks.) “For a moment I couldn’t remember where I was.” 

“You’re right where you belong,” John assures him. He shifts a bit into a more comfortable position and putting his hand on Sherlock’s jawline at the same time, stroking a bit with his thumb. 

“It’s all right that I – ” Sherlock doesn’t sound worried, but there’s still an anxious note in there somewhere, a desire to confirm. 

“Of course,” John says swiftly, and leans over to put his mouth on Sherlock’s, kissing him for a long minute. Sherlock kisses back and turns onto his side, put his hand on John’s rib cage. After, he pulls back a little, just enough to look John properly in the eyes. 

“Last night,” he begins. “All that – the – things we did – is it – was it – ”

John waits for a moment, not wanting to interrupt, but Sherlock seems at a loss for words. “It was wonderful, at least for me,” he says softly, searching Sherlock’s face. “Is that what you’re asking?” 

“More or less,” Sherlock says. “I suppose I just wanted to – verify.”

“That we’re this now?” John asks, and when Sherlock nods, he smiles again and twines his fingers into Sherlock’s. “Believe it,” he says. “I know – it feels unbelievable. But it happened. This is really real.”

Sherlock doesn’t smile, his eyes intent on John’s for a long moment, then he bends forward and kisses John again, though it’s shorter than the first was. “Are you going to shower?” he asks. 

John firmly puts any thought of morning sex out of mind and reminds himself that they are taking this at Sherlock’s pace. “I might, yeah,” he says, aiming to sound casual. 

“Then go shower,” Sherlock tells him. “I’m going to make breakfast.” 

“No arguments here. I’m starving.” John slides out of bed on his side, already missing Sherlock’s proximity. He’s still nude, of course, and sporting a bit of morning wood, and he notes that Sherlock’s eyes find and track it as he ambles across the room to get his dressing gown on. 

“John…” 

John turns back. “Yeah?” 

Sherlock is sitting on the edge of the bed, his hair dishevelled, and there’s a swell of flesh between his legs, his teeth worrying at his lower lip. He pauses. “Never mind,” he says. 

“Tell me,” John says, feeling Sherlock’s gaze on the opening of his untied robe like lasers. 

Sherlock’s lips part and his eyes drop to John’s cock, now hard enough that it’s poking out between the two halves of his dressing gown. He can’t seem to bring himself to speak. 

John walks slowly, deliberately back across the small space. Sherlock instinctively parts his knees and allows John to step into the space between them, his eyes on John’s face. His hands come up and push back the robe and John lets it drop off his arms, slithering into a heap on the floor. Sherlock takes his hands and wordlessly pulls John onto him as he leans back onto the bed and John follows, straddling Sherlock’s waist, both their cocks stiffer than wood and knocking into one another’s. “Couldn’t just let me walk away after all?” John asks, teasing, bending over Sherlock with a look of intent in his eyes. 

“No,” Sherlock says, very directly. “Not with you looking like that. And – aroused, too.”

John grins down at him and reaches for the drawer of his night stand. He has a small collection of lubricants, which Sherlock has almost certainly discovered in his various probings around John’s room – not that they’ve ever discussed this, but in the old days, at least, Sherlock certainly would have had the occasional hunt through John’s things. He grabs for the first one his hand touches and gets some onto the both of them and Sherlock exhales vocally, his breath heavy and hot. John rests his weight on his elbows and forearms, his face close to Sherlock’s as he begins to thrust against him, keeping the rhythm slow and gentle at first, their cocks rubbing together. Sherlock’s eyes are on his, his lips still parted, his large hands gripping John’s arse. Last night it was Sherlock on him, uncertain in his technique but very certain about the ultimate destination. Now it’s John panting and rutting against him, Sherlock’s long leg wound around his hip and thigh as their cocks thrust against each other’s. There’s no need to say anything; they’re looking into each other’s eyes, breathing heavily, and the sweetness of the friction is building into a crescendo – John finally breaks the eye contact to squeeze his eyes shut, teeth gritting together as he tries to hold himself back, but then Sherlock makes a sharp sound in his throat and holds John to himself as they grind together, and John can feel it in Sherlock’s balls just before he starts to come. There’s a gush of liquid warmth between them, Sherlock panting shallowly. His cock is spurting between them and John can’t hold back any longer and stops trying, a gut-deep grunt tearing from his throat as he thrusts into the warm mess and then his body clenches and he comes, adding to it. He’s aware of Sherlock’s fingers still gripping his arse the entire while, and that intensifies it. His cock lets out another burst of come and then his muscles give way and he lets himself down onto Sherlock’s chest, moving his hands to Sherlock’s forehead. They’re just looking into each other’s eyes and breathing hard, cocooned in a world that’s been shrunk down to containing only the two of them, and it’s perfect. John doesn’t need a single other soul. “You’re amazing,” he tells Sherlock’s, his heart pounding in his rib cage. 

Sherlock transfers his hands from John’s arse to his face. “Is it – always like this?” he asks, still panting. “With other people, I mean – has it always been – ?”

John shakes his head. “Not like this, no. Not this intense. I never had to wait for it for so long.” 

Sherlock’s gaze shifts from one eye to the other, but he doesn’t say anything, preferring instead to draw John’s face down to his. They kiss for awhile, their skin sticking together, and it’s warm and messy and intimate and fantastic, John thinks. After a bit, Sherlock releases him and says, “You can go shower now.”

John laughs. “You’ll permit it this time, will you?” 

“Yes,” Sherlock says seriously. “And I’ll make breakfast. As I said.” 

“All right,” John agrees. He gives Sherlock a last, quick peck, then climbs off him and retrieves his dressing gown from the floor. He heads down to the shower, feeling absolutely marvellous, like the entire world has just been remade for his sole benefit. Well: he revises mentally. Perhaps not his _sole_ benefit. There are two of them in this now. 

*** 

Sherlock outdoes himself for breakfast, making a frittata with spinach, red pepper, and sharp cheddar (“there wasn’t time to make pastry for a quiche,” he explains, as though apologising), sausages, toasted cinnamon brioche slathered in butter, and he’s peeled several satsumas and put the sections in a bowl. He times it so that he’s managed to get dressed himself and have it all ready just in time for John to come downstairs dressed and passes him a cup of Earl Grey as he sits down. 

“Oh – I forgot the milk,” Sherlock says, and goes to the fridge to get it. He brings it back, puts it down on the table beside John’s cup, and looks down at him for a second. John takes the opportunity to pull Sherlock down by the front of his shirt to kiss him thoroughly. 

Sherlock looks a tiny bit dishevelled as he goes round to the opposite side of the table once John’s let him go, smoothing a hand down the front of his shirt but smirking a little at the same time, seeming a bit pleased by the whole thing. He sits down and they start eating and it feels normal and yet everything is completely different at the same time. Finally, toward the end of the meal, Sherlock says, “All right, tell me: how do we just live now? How do we just – go about our daily lives, when this has happened? It’s not a complaint; I just – we cannot just sit around the flat smiling ourselves to death from now on.”

John has to smile at this. “I know what you mean,” he acknowledges. “We’ll get used to it, though. I know it must seem a bit overwhelming at the moment, never having done this before. Well, I suppose I haven’t really done this before, either. Not like this. I mean, we’ve sort of gone about it backwards, haven’t we? Most people aren’t already living together when they start dating.”

Sherlock takes a sip of tea, weighing his words. “Is that what we are now?” he asks, his eyes direct and very blue at the moment. “Dating?” 

“A good deal more than that, I hope,” John assures him. “Though I don’t want to put pressure on it to be… too much too soon, I suppose. I mean, it’s just that we already work together, live together, have this whole life, and it seems a bit as though we could just skip directly ahead to acting old and married or something, but this _is_ new and I don’t want to rush anything. Though, that said, I was sort of surprised by last night.”

Sherlock blinks at him. “How so?” 

“When you came upstairs,” John says, over the edge of his cup. “I wasn’t expecting it to happen so soon, honestly. Not that I’m complaining at all! I just want things to go at the speed they need to go. It had been developing in such a lovely, slow pace – I was just surprised, that’s all.” 

Sherlock smiles. “Can I come up again tonight?”

“Of course!” John says at once. “That’s not something you need to ask again. I imagine that at some point not far from now, we’ll just designate one of the bedrooms as ‘ours’, but there’s no need to rush that stage, either. As you like. I want this to go at the pace it needs to go.”

Sherlock’s eyes glint. “What if it only needed… confirmation?” he asks. “Because this has been developing since far before you came home after Christmas. This has been going on since the start. It’s only that some other things got in the way. We both had to deduce it for ourselves. It was there on the instinctive level, but not on the rational one. Not on the surface.” 

“That’s true enough,” John concedes. He smiles over the table at Sherlock. “But we’re sorted now, aren’t we.” 

“I would say so.” Sherlock reaches over, his palm turned up, and John puts his hand in it, his heart feeling so full that he thinks it may just burst. 

*** 

The next three days are like a very, very happy dream, the very best days John has ever lived in the whole of his life. Every day just seems to build on the one before, and despite what he said about them keeping their own rooms for a while longer if Sherlock wants that, they’ve never slept apart since it started. Sexually, they’ve kept to relatively tame things, and even so it’s easily the most exciting sex John has ever had, more physically and emotionally gratifying than it’s ever been with anyone else. There are things he is dying to try, but he’s waiting for Sherlock to initiate them. 

On the fourth day he drags himself out of the flat and back to the clinic and the real world, leaving Sherlock’s bed with a post-coitally sleepy, very naked Sherlock in it with immense reluctance. 

Sherlock texts him toward half-four and John grabs for his phone like a lovelorn teen, feeling more than usually forlorn at their first prolonged separation since having finally got it together. The text reads: 

_I know you said that we should take things_  
_slowly. However, keeping to the overall_  
_theme, there is something I feel we should_  
_try. If it seems a little advanced, perhaps we_  
_can make it an eventual goal? Modified for_  
_two men, of course. Tell me what you think?_

There’s a link attached, so John presses it with his finger in curiosity. It’s a Kama Sutra page that comes up, with a diagram of a position titled the Lotus Blossom. John goggles at it for a moment, his heartbeat already quicker. He goes back to the text screen and types quickly. 

_Definitely possible! Could take a bit of_  
_practise, though, given that we’ve never_  
_done that sort of thing at all just yet._

He presses send and the new receptionist pops his head around the door. “Dr Watson? Mrs Branthwaite is here.”

There’s a soft sound from his phone and John looks down to read Sherlock’s response. 

_Let’s start practising, then. I’m ready now,_  
_just waiting for you. Come home!_

“Sorry,” John says aloud, automatically, the words tripping over themselves in their haste to get out. “Can’t do it – I’ve got to get home. Emergency, I’m afraid. See if Dr White can take her – she didn’t have too many on for this afternoon.” 

“Right, okay,” the receptionist says, and John doesn’t bother waiting for him to go before grabbing his coat and heading for the door. 

He steps out onto the pavement and hails a taxi. As it slows, he gets in and says, “Baker Street, and I’m in a massive hurry!” The driver acknowledges this and makes a wild u-turn there in front of the clinic, and John types back on the phone still in his hands. 

_I’m coming!_

*

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Cover Art] for "The White Lotuses" by SilentAuror](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4277604) by [Hamstermoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hamstermoon/pseuds/Hamstermoon)
  * [The White Lotuses [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5821324) by [Lockedinjohnlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lockedinjohnlock/pseuds/Lockedinjohnlock)




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